A CANTERBURY COUPLE who fought a government agency for 20 years for consent to build hotel accommodation within easy reach of Aoraki Mount Cook are now selling their hard-won permit.

Mary and Charlie Hobbs are selling a development right to the “last hotel” in Aoraki Mount Cook Village, where Department of Conservation (DOC) controls the surrounding national park's prized commercial area.

The couple were granted a DOC concession in December to build a 35-unit “boutique” hotel and spa in the south Canterbury alpine village, beside a protected conservation area, Bowen Bush.

The Hobbs' have a 49-year permit to build and run a hotel, and separately to provide accommodation at their existing village business, the Old Mountaineer's Cafe Restaurant.

A new hotel and spa at Aoraki Mount Cook village would boast one of the mostspectacular views in the country.

Mary Hobbs said it had taken them about 20 years to obtain permits for their Old Maintaineer's Cafe and hotel/spa plans.

Waiting for the hotel permit had been like a Christchurch hotel developer applying to build in Cathedral Square in 2011 and not getting consent until 2021, she said. Their priorities had changed over the years, she said. “I'm not in my twenties or thirties any more.”

They put their hotel and spa up for sale soon after DOC granted it.

The Hobbs' have recruited real estate firm Colliers to find a buyer for their DOC “authorisation right”. A buyer would get a 3,000 square-metre hotel and spa block, 1.5 ha of landscaping and a 1,890 square-metre accommodation block for hotel staff.

The operating concession would be a “goldmine” for a new owner, Hobbs said.

Colliers is promoting the hotel and spa as “the last visitor accommodation site available [in the park] with a direct line of sight to Aoraki/Mt Cook….”

Hobbs said DOC had told them the site was the last place in the village where it would be possible to build a hotel, partly because of the lay of the land in the area.

“As Charlie says, ‘they're not making any more Mount Cooks’, so once this site is gone, that will be it for independent accommodation sites in the village.”

Mary Hobbs wrote a book about the couple's disagreements with DOC and the village's long-standing hotel operator, The Hermitage over the right to run a competing business within the national park.

She said they had put their previous disagreements with DOC and The Hermitage behind them. The prospective new spa would tap tourism's health and wellness market, as well as meeting strong demand for accommodation in the village, she said.

Colliers agent Barry Robertson said hotel and spa facilities like the proposed Aoraki Mount Cook site are popular throughout the South Island and there was a shortage of tourist accommodation to cater for it, he said.